The Voice of Christ

We looked ahead to the Third Sunday of Lent this week, where Jesus encounters the woman at the well. At first, he asks her for a drink but the conversation quickly leads to her seeking the living water he is promising. It is an important reminder that our words and conversation have the power to transform lives.

We know that our voices can have the power to destroy or to build up - words can hurt or they can heal. Children's talk in the playground is often a very good measure of how effectively they can use their voices for good. Many children don't hear how harmful their own voice can be; it takes time and maturity to hear the impact of our own words. We've encouraged the children this week to become more conscious of the power of their own voice as they listen more closely for God's too.

A - 3rd Lent

Know your "ow"

The snow fell perfectly earlier this week, on the day Reception were learning the 'ow' sound! It made it super easy for them to remember the learning rhyme 'go slow in the snow'.

We had a wonderful day, rich with describing words and learning opportunities. Check out some of our colour mixing and snowman building.

Junior Netball

Congratulations to our talented Year 5 & 6 Netball Teams, who represented St Joseph's in a local tournament at George Abbot School earlier this week. Both teams did exceptionally well, facing fierce competition, and the Year 6 squad even netted the gold medal - coming first! Congratulations to all involved!

Storytellers

In English, Year 3 are currently learning about suspense texts and the features they show. After hearing a short story, the children were divided into groups to retell a paragraph using actions. After a couple of days, the children no longer required their words and were able to recite their paragraph with enthusiasm and expression. They enjoyed performing the whole story to several different people during the week. In another lesson, the children created story maps to retell their paragraph using minimal words and clear pictures. They then concluded which method helped them retell the story best.

Skilful Science

During the Science lessons this half term, Year 5 have been investigating materials and their properties. They have been focusing on soluble and insoluble materials and predicting whether a material will dissolve, float, sink or create a solution or mixture when put into water. Here are some photos of the children enjoying using their scientific skills over the past two lessons. This week they were asked to investigate which type of sugar would dissolve quickest in water and why ?

Is this a dagger which I see before me?

In Year 6, we have been studying Shakepeare's classic: Macbeth. The children have produced some powerful writing inspired by Macbeth's tormented soliloquy when realising he may have gone too far. We challenged the young writers to use a range of figurative language including juxtapositions and idioms to have maximum impact. Well done Year 6!

New Dimensions in Year 2

What fun we had starting our learning about 3D shapes on the day the snow came! The children went outside to identify 3D shapes in the playground. We found many cylinders and cuboids on the wooden train, a tetrahedron, cone and spheres. We then made our own 3D shapes out of the snow. Can you guess what they are?

Book Awards

Year 1 have loved taking part in the Hampshire Book Award this year. We were sent a surprise selection of 4 shortlisted books: The Elephant Detectives, Grandad's Camper, A Hero Called Wolf and The Day Fin Flooded the World. We spent time immersing ourselves in each of the texts, exploring the characters, plots, writing and illustrations through drama, art and writing activities. Through this, we have also been working on our reading skills of prediction, retrieval, inference and vocabulary.

We loved every single text and so, when it came to judging time, we had some difficult decisions to make! Each child was given their own voting slip and a secret ballot was carried out.

Year 1 at St Joseph's favourite book? Some close results but, The Day Fin Flooded the World came out on top!

We can't wait to see if other schools thought the same and which book has won overall.

Celebrating the Seasons

This week in Nursery has been another busy one. We began by discussing ‘Spring’ and talking about a festival celebrated in Romania (as well as other countries) – Martisor. where silky red and white threads are tied into a bow with a small trinket attached which are given to family, friends and colleagues to show friendship, respect and wish them good luck for a prosperous and healthy year. One of the families in Ladybird class, gave the children some lovely spring and Martisor handouts to colour in and represent the festival. We love celebrating festivals that are significant to our families. After teaching the children about how the weather usually warms up during Spring, we were greeted on Wednesday morning with a lovely glistening snowfall, one child even said, “It’s Christmas!” The children were invited to play in the snow and build some snow sculptures. Towards the end of the week, one child arrived to nursery with some beautiful daffodils and presented them to his teachers with a lovely explanation as to why he giving them, “because it was (International) woman’s and girls day.”

3V's Inspirational Voice!

This week, St Vincent de Paul's class led us in a spectacular worship on this week's theme of 'speaking out'.

They reminded us of many witnesses from around the world who have used their voices to promote the greater good, including Malala Yousafzai, Martin Luther King and Jason Momoa.

With a beautiful and powerful rendition of 'Brave' by Sara Bareilles, the children of 3V demonstrated exactly how we can use our voice to spread messages of kindness and love, being brave to use the voices God has given us:

"Say what you wanna say

And let the words fall out

Honestly I wanna see you be brave

With what you want to say

And let the words fall out

Honestly I wanna see you be brave."

Witnesses of Speaking Out

Congratulations to Alice, Jayden, Joshua and Akansha for being this week's witnesses of speaking out and using their voices with kindness towards others.

Thank you for leading by example this week!

Year 4 Explore...

Year 4 earned extra time in the snow on Wednesday due to their hard work and excellent behaviour. They enjoyed making snowmen, giant snowballs and snow angels as a year group and were delighted that they got the snow all to themselves!